Building a virtual Roman city: teaching history through video game design

Abstract

In October of 2018, a pedagogical experiment was conducted at York University, Toronto, Canada, in which students were given an assignment. For this assignment they were to conduct research on a variety of Roman public buildings in groups, build digital reconstructions of them using the Unity 3D game engine, and present them to the class in the form of a virtual reality (VR) simulation. In doing so, students were able to create a virtual built environment based on their research, navigate it, and discuss the space with a sense of immersion and scale. Using this experiment as a case study, the goal of this article is twofold: firstly, to assess the pedagogical efficacy of constructionist approaches to teaching students about Roman architecture, specifically using VR and video game design technology. The second goal is to address the technical and pedagogical challenges of using game design software in the classroom and to propose ways in which this assignment can be improved in the future.